Eight of the UK’s top funders met last month to plan how to help increase charities’ use of technology.

The event was organised by the government-funded campaign Race Online 2012, in order to find out what role it could play in supporting the modernisation of charities and thereby ensuring their end users can benefit from being online.

According to Race Online 2012, attendees agreed that funders could:

• Give greater signposting for grantees and applicants to low or no-cost technology support such as IT4Communities and the Charity Technology Trust (CTT);
• Look at ways to update guidance on full cost recovery;
• Run seminars to help funders make informed judgments on technology applications;
• Share lessons and best practice on funding IT;
• Develop a light-touch technology audit tool for grantees to carry out at point of application;
• Raise the profile of the benefits of technology adoption and efficiency within funders’ own organisations and within the charities they fund, for example through the media;
• Support the Big Lottery Fund (BIG) in switching to online-only functions, with BIG sharing its learning as project moves forward;
• Hold a working group to push for greater sharing of charity expertise across the funding sector.

The aforementioned working group will include representation from Comic Relief, CCITDG, Socitm, IT4Communities and CTT and will meet in April.

More effective funding

Attendees at the funders meeting included representatives from BIG, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Wolfson Foundation, the Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales, the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, Comic Relief, the Community Foundation Network, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) and CTT.

Also present was Dawn Austwick (pictured), chief executive of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, who opened the event by saying: “Today is about how we, as funders, become more effective, help the organisations that we fund, and in turn, allow them to help excluded or hard-to-reach groups to both benefit from technology.”

Casebook released

The meeting preceded the release of Survive and Thrive, a casebook created by Race Online 2012 to demonstrate how charities are making use of technology and which includes contributions from Comic Relief, the NSPCC and Sue Ryder Care.

Race Online 2012 intends to create further practical tools to support its aim of modernising the sector's IT.

Social impact measurement

Meanwhile, CTT has responded by commencing a project aimed at measuring the social value of IT.

Writing about the event, CTT’s then CEO William Hoyle said that, like many, he had always had the sense that funders were reluctant to support technology projects.

However, he added: “I came away from the meeting with a realisation that if funders are to give serious consideration to funding ICT investment, then we have to do a better job of demonstrating the social impact of these investments.”

CTT will also meet with the ACF next week to discuss how the Association acts as a vehicle for educational programmes.